TDA in Japan: Right out of the Gate

by The Discovering Alcoholic on February 25, 2009

Well it didn’t take long to find fodder for the blog, right out of the Narita airport gate and into the downtown shuttle I ran into a topic of interest. An article in the “Quarterly Onboard Magazine of the Airport Limousine”, watch out NYT they’re after you, had one English article out of about twenty pages and as you may have already guessed- it was on alcohol in the workplace.

From the pages of the quarterly:

Just after giving the “good morning” greeting at the start of the workday, limousine bus crew members perform a breath test. They blow into a shorth straw connected to an alcoholic detecting device. They perform this test both at the start and conclusion of the workday. Upon calculation, a slip of paper on which the alcohol level is printed to 0.000mg degree

Obviously this is something that has been in place for a good while here because later in the article it mentions another safety measure taken that seems to have been added for those that had figured out how to game the system.

Click “Read more” to continue…

At the time the crew performs a breath test, a digital photograph of the face is taken with the alcohol level data.

Sounds like you had the sober buddy system going with the clean guy blowing for those less than sober- I have no doubt that would happen in the States. So now when the machine takes the reading it also snaps a picture.

It certainly seems like a good system, but I doubt before and after work drug tests along with visual verification would be a big hit elsewhere. Just out of curiosity I did look up the BAC limit in Japan… it’s at .02, lowered from .03 and they have results to prove that lower is better. Now that’s a figure that would give Sara Longwell of the ABI nightmares!